Abandon - Carla Neggers [73]
“Those were taken awhile ago,” Rook said, standing over Mackenzie.
She looked up at him. “You FBI types must get more training in being stealthy.”
“It’s not that difficult when someone’s preoccupied.”
“I remember this visit,” she said, pointing to the pictures. “It was the summer between my junior and senior years in college. I had a part-time internship at a local museum and a job cleaning rooms at one of the inns in town. Bernadette had my parents and me over for dinner, and I remember how fascinated I was listening to her and Harris talk. He’s a smart man.”
“Judge Peacham must have been devastated when he let it all get away from him.”
“She was.” Mackenzie shut the album and rose, feeling the stiffness of the healing cut in her side. So many questions would be answered by now if she’d been able to hang on to her attacker. “She worried he’d commit suicide in the beginning. I was here once when he called her. It was right after the scandal broke. I was in graduate school—I was down here for research, Harris was drunk, angry at himself at having been exposed. He couldn’t see that he’d done anything wrong, legally or ethically. Beanie convinced him to tell her where he was.”
“Where?”
“A rooming house. It was some kind of secret hideout for him. He’d go there and indulge his dark side, I guess. I went with Beanie to collect him. She dropped him off at his house in Georgetown and gave him an ultimatum—never again.”
Rook glanced down at the shut album. “Did she keep that promise?”
“As far as I know.” Mackenzie stepped past him, but turned as she reached the door. “Would you like to check out the rooming house? I hadn’t thought of it until now. I don’t know if Harris still uses it.”
“Can you find it?”
“I think so. If I can’t, I can call Beanie. She’ll remember where it is.”
Rook considered a moment. Outside, Bernadette’s tall shade trees swayed in the wind, and rain lashed the windows. Finally, he said, “We’ll take my car.”
Mackenzie nodded. “All right.” As she started out of the study, she smiled back at him. “Try not to let the cat out when we leave.”
She thought he might have cracked a smile, but she wasn’t sure, which, she realized, was part of the fun of being around him. But she couldn’t think in those terms right now. She had to focus on the job at hand.
“He took the place for a month.” The superintendent, a wiry, middle-aged man with sparse tufts of close-cropped hair, had led Rook and Mackenzie to an ell off the rundown building. “That’s the most he ever takes it for. He comes and goes. He don’t call himself Harris Mayer, though. Harry Morrison. Pays in cash.”
Rook stood on the sidewalk behind the super. The rain had stopped, but thunder still rumbled in the distance. “When did you see him last?”
“A week ago. Maybe more.” He stuck the key in the door, shook his head. “Hear that? Air-conditioning. He keeps it going full blast. His choice—he pays the bills.” He unlocked the door, pushed it open, then jumped back. “Oh. My goodness, my goodness.”
Rook drew his weapon and saw that Mackenzie had done the same. He instructed the superintendent to move back onto the sidewalk and gave the door a kick to open it wider.
The worn wood floor of a small entry was splattered with dried blood. It was plainly blood. Careful of where he stepped, Rook entered the studio, immediately recognizing a smell that air-conditioning couldn’t suppress.
He glanced at Mackenzie, right behind him. “Mac, this isn’t going to be good. You’ve never—”
“I’m okay, Rook.”
“You know Harris.”
A tightness around her eyes betrayed her emotion, but she gave a curt nod. “So do you. Let’s just do this.”
They moved into the adjoining room, the furnishings threadbare and cheap but serviceable. Ancient air conditioners in a front window and a window in the kitchenette clunked and groaned.
“There,” Mackenzie said, nodding to the floor in front of a shut door. “More blood.”
She stood to the side, and Rook pushed open the door.
The smell was worse. There